


A Helping Hand

by misanthropyray



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Brotherly Love, Drug Addiction, Gen, violin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-26
Updated: 2011-04-26
Packaged: 2017-10-18 17:24:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/191364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misanthropyray/pseuds/misanthropyray
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shortly after he’d turned seven, and bored of the furniture being set alight or swarms of bees being set free in the attic, Mummy sent him to violin lessons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Helping Hand

**Author's Note:**

> Beta-ed by thisprettywren

Shortly after he’d turned seven, and bored of the furniture being set alight or swarms of bees being set free in the attic, Mummy sent him to violin lessons. It wasn’t the first attempt at keeping little Sherlock occupied, of course, but it was the first that could be credited with some modicum of success.

In times of reckless vanity, I like to think I had something to do with his interest in the pastime. I too had taken up the instrument when I was around his age, you see. As a boy, he would storm into my room whenever I practised, sitting on the end of my bed, throwing nearby objects in an attempt at distracting me. Sometimes though, there would be a slight creak outside the door as he sat in the corridor and listened, the silent observer.

It took almost two years of lessons before he really took to the instrument though. He would attend weekly lessons with his teacher, Mrs Wood in the music room at the back of the house. She was a friend of the family and knew what to expect from her prodigy, but her tenacity in that area was somewhat unexpected by all.

She was a person best characterised by her roundness; not only round in her face and figure, but also a well rounded personality, scalding and encouraging in equal parts, honest but not blindly encouraging.

Sherlock attended the lessons with decreasing resistance until it became integrated into his routine without comment, though I never heard him play. No one did. He seemed never to rehearse outside of the lessons, or at least, not during those first two years. Even when he accompanied me to my violin practise, he wouldn’t reach for the bow himself, choosing instead to critique my performance in increasingly well informed terms.

Everyone is allowed their opinion after all, I suppose.

====

I was 16 when I moved out of the family estate to attend a private boarding college in the neighbouring county. I was packing the things in my room on a warm August evening when I heard it. The sound came curling through my open window in melancholy waves born of wailing strings. The tune was unfamiliar to me, but then I expect it was unfamiliar to everyone except its composer. I looked outside and could see no one, but the origin of the sound was clear. On the other side of the grounds stood a weeping willow which Sherlock had been using as a den for years. The climbing, mournful notes escaped from beneath its sweeping curtain like the stage of a closed theatre, spreading out across the gardens and into my chambers.

I put down the boxes and pulled an armchair over to the window. Closing my eyes, I thought of all the occasions Sherlock had sat outside my door, listening to my renditions of Brahms or Tchaikovsky but somehow this seemed so much more personal. My playing was read from the sheet and played as the composer intended--a direct conversion from page to sound, technical perfection--whereas this was entirely different. This was naked self-expression.

I flushed slightly, listening to the story unfolding within the singing sharps and aching flats, desperately trying to sort this unprecedented new information. This wasn’t in the equation, this new dimension just didn’t fit; Sherlock the impetuous, Sherlock the carelessly deleterious, Sherlock the perpetually disinterested, and now this.

So silly that it had never occurred to me before. I had always seen him as a reflection of myself, a mirror, equally empty of emotive impulses. It appeared I had done so in error.

The singing strings continued their tortured aria for nearly an hour while the sun set, the melody lifting on occasion before spiralling back down into melancholy once more, eventually fading out with a single, trailing note, held until the vibration could carry it no longer.

As the last note died into silence, I closed the curtains. Sherlock had always treasured his hiding place and I had no desire to alert him to the fact it was not as secret as he believed, hadn’t been in years.

The next morning, the family stood outside to see me on my way. Sherlock stood at the end of the short line, shuffling his feet and staring off into the distance absentmindedly.

“Bye, then.”

“Come here” I said, pulling him into a hug. It was awkward at first as he stood, unmoving. As siblings, we don’t touch, neither of us were tactile and physical contact was not a natural impulse, so the hug caught him off-guard.

“Mycroft, what are you doing?”

“Shhh.”

His resistance softened after a moment and he brought his arms up around me, standing on tiptoes to ease the height difference, still uncertain but seemingly willing to humour me this time. When I released him and he stood back and cocked his head at me. He knew something was different, though I’m sure he just put it down to my imminent change in habitation.

“Goodbye, little brother. See you at Christmas.”

He didn’t reply.

I waved to Mummy and Daddy as the car drove down with winding driveway.

====

During Sherlock’s first year at university, I was brought to Cambridge on business. Mummy had bought a flat for him and his little friend, Victor, to use for the duration of their studies but one of Mummy’s conditions was that the spare room always be available for familial visits, much to Sherlock’s chagrin.

After a series of trying meetings and a dinner which could most accurately be described as relentlessly terse, I showed myself to bed. I took an hour or so to finish up some paperwork and just as I began to tidy my papers away, the first vibrato notes came drifting into the room.

It had been nearly a decade since I last heard him play and the music had evolved. He still wasn’t playing music composed by others. I suspect he never does; he’s probably deleted everything technical he ever learned in lessons, playing now by instinct and muscle memory alone.

His music had matured. He was always older than his years in intellect but now the rest of him seemed to be catching up. A little, anyway. He has his studies and full run of the University library and archives; he has a companion who appears both tolerant and accepting of him. He’s contented now, it seems. A conversation with him would never reveal it, but his music speaks volumes.

The melody danced through the flat, loud enough that he must have known that I could hear, but it would have felt wrong to cross this implicit barrier, like an intrusion into the most personal and vulnerable facet of my brother’s personality; his sole form of self expression.

I lay on top of the crisp, white sheets of the bed in the middle of the room, my eyes closed and the strings vibrating the air around me. It was a light-hearted, almost playful tune, the product of a soul less pained than that of his youth.

I drifted off to sleep as the last note faded into silence.

====

Sherlock came to stay at my lodgings in Gloucester Terrace during his second detox, this time from the cocaine and not the morphine. With fewer physical symptoms to distract him this time, his recovery was far more trying for all involved.

I’m unsure whether it was the chemical withdrawal or simply an act of rebellion against my intervention, but he refused to sleep for the first four days of his stay. If simply staying conscious had been his only form of attack, it wouldn’t have warranted my mentioning it, but with his wakeful hours he carried out what I can only describe as aural torment.

His violin became a weapon and his most potent form of attack against any attempt at care-giving. There was no hint of the delicate self-expression which I had trespassed upon in years gone by; the instrument had mutated into a snarling, screaming, tortured beast. Time slowed to a pathetic crawl.

The lack of emotional intimacy apparently meant an end to the element of secrecy surrounding his playing, as Sherlock followed my movements around the flat, dragging a howling soundtrack from those overworked strings. Eventually the abused strings would give in and split, floating out behind him as they remained tethered to their tormentor. On the fourth day, the last string bowed out of the fight.

In the morning, I found him midway through an attempt at restringing the violin, lying still on the bed curled around the instrument, fingers woven through the pegs, surrounded by blissful silence.

====

He’s always had a reckless streak, a total disregard for his own wellbeing. Usually, his own bone idleness meant he wasn’t usually in any serious danger beyond the odd chemical reaction gone awry, but that all changed when he got his foot in the door with the Metropolitan Police.

Over the course of several months, he showed a natural flair for tracking down the capital’s wrongdoers, and my own trepidation didn’t ease. His life slowly shifted until crime became an all consuming central theme.

I received a call one night from a nurse who informed me that my brother had found his way into hospital; a misguided exercise in tact led her to say the circumstances were unknown. On my way to the hospital, I tried to establish a likely course for the evening’s events, but the facts were less concrete than I would have liked. It was then that I resolved to keep a more watchful eye on my brother dearest.

A number of conflicting reports made extracting exact details a trifle more challenging than was necessary; the only information that I managed to glean was that the ‘incident’ had something to do with a case with which he was involved, though the injury itself appeared to be self inflicted.

The car rolled up to the front entrance of A&E, where I stepped out before it disappeared into the night. Even in the early hours of the morning, the reception area hummed with unfortunate souls suffering the fragility of humanity. I found my way to the private room in which Sherlock had been stowed, marked with a lone police officer standing watch in the corridor.

Sherlock looked ghostly against the white halo of pillow cushioning his sleeping head. The sheets covering him were tucked tightly around his torso and his arms lay on top of the covers. One of his scrawny wrists was wrapped in a bandage whilst the other was locked into a splint. As I surveyed his wounds, trying to establish a more concrete course of events, someone entered the room behind me.

“And who might you be?”

“Mycroft Holmes.”

“I didn’t know Sherlock had a brother. Do you have any ID to confirm that?”

How tedious. After some rather inelegant formalities, DI Lestrade honoured me with some long overdue facts about the evening’s events.

It had started with an investigation into a drug smuggling ring a week earlier. Sherlock had had some minor successes in the case but the ringleaders had yet to be brought to justice. Lestrade had received a call earlier in the day about some grand realisation and was supposed to be meeting Sherlock in one of the warehouses to go over the facts. He had arrived at the warehouse with a group of officers and waited for his appearance to no avail. An attempt to call his mobile got no answer beyond the faint sound of ringing coming from the mezzanine level of the old factory warehouse.

They followed the sound to find Sherlock, unconscious and bound to a chair in a pool of his own blood; he’d been drugged and his wrists had been slashed. The doctors have said that his blood levels were low but not critical, though one of the cuts had sliced through three of the flexor tendons in his right hand.

If there had ever been any hope in knocking some sense into the boy, one might think this would do it, but I feared the contrary.

He was discharged from hospital the following evening. I had a car waiting for him but he took a taxi in some effort at childish rebellion. I reached his flat before the cab and made myself at home in his living room, clearing the stack of papers from a dusty armchair, but replaced them upon being confronted by the likely state of cleanliness of the upholstery uncovered.

On unlocking the door, he fastidiously avoided my gaze.

“Sherlock, how d--”

He walked through the living room and into his bedroom, closing the door with a flourish and a ceremonious slam. All attempts at knocking or communication were promptly ignored and I eventually showed myself out. I hired a nurse to check in on him every few days and waited for a prudent two months before attempting another visit.

When I arrived at the flat, the air hung musty and stale in the room. Newspapers covered the floor and most available surfaces, jumbled together with pens, mugs, shards of glass, and a thousand other fragments of debris. In the middle of the chaos, lay Sherlock. He was draped across the sofa wearing a pair of acrid, grey pyjamas, his hair longer and more unruly than usual. He acknowledged my entrance with a momentary sideward glance before returning his gaze to the far wall in staunch silence, his expression drenched in underlying anger.

“How are you feeling?”

“Why are you here, Mycroft?”

“A simple concern for my nearest and dearest.”

“I wasn’t aware I was either.”

Sherlock kicked a foot against the end of the sofa and continued his examination of the wall, shifting his position and resting his arm across his torso. The movement revealed a line of scarring along his wrist, angry and bright against his skin. I walked over to his ingrained furrow in the couch and perched next to him, picking up the draped arm and examining the hand closely.

The scar was dotted on either side--evidence of stitches which had been recently removed--and the surrounding skin was even more sickly pale around it from the dressing. His fingers hung limply in my hand and there was no hint of resistance when I applied gentle pressure, though Sherlock released a sharp breath and drew away from my grasp.

“I was unaware you had a medical background. Funny, I thought Mummy might mention something about her first born training to be a doctor.”

“Have you been doing your exercises?”

“Boring.”

“Sit up.”

He detected my change in tone, harder and more direct. His eyes flickered for a second, uncertain how to react, before he complied, shifting and dropping his legs to the floor. His violin lay carelessly on the floor, half tucked under the neighbouring armchair, sheltered by a notepad covered with shakily scrawled words. I reached out for it and placed it across my lap, resting a hand upon its glossy surface.

“I can’t.”

His voice was barely audible and sounded almost vulnerable. Sherlock can be many things, but vulnerability was so far out of his oeuvre that it was heartbreaking to hear.

“No, _you_ can’t. But _we_ can.”

His eyes found mine, understanding my offer and weighing out its feasibility. We had never been close as brothers and for him to let me in, to share a moment of unfiltered emotion with me, would be an unprecedented move. But what choice did he have?

The fingers on his right hand twitched as he considered his options.

I turned my body towards him and hitched a leg up onto the sofa, pulling him into the crook of my knee. He was compliant but sat awkwardly, brow furrowed.

I picked up the violin in my left and rested it on his shoulder. Sherlock instinctively brought his head down to meet it, fitting his jaw into the rest with a slight movement almost like a caress.

“Put your hand on my leg, Sherlock.”

We worked out a system, using the functioning finger and thumb on his broken hand; a musical Morse. A sweep with the little finger for A, a press of the thumb for G, a quick double pressure for D and so on; the higher on my thigh, the lower down the neck the string would be pressed.

The playing was stilted at first while easing into the system, Sherlock’s pent up aggression venting in fits and starts; he jabbed angrily into the back of my knee when a change didn’t happen as fast as he liked or if I fell out of his desired key. We gradually eased into a rhythm, his music looping and repeating sections which would come more easily each time.

My heart ached to think of him lying here, denied his only means of escape from his own mind, a future of silence stretching out before him.

The sharp frustration of the melody began to ebb away, morphing into something softer and more relaxed. It was hope. His entire posture began to change, his taut muscles gently twitching and releasing, his body falling back against me as we moved together. I rested my head against his shoulder while he continued, rolling and undulating with the sound, his face a picture of concentration and bliss in equal measure.

As the last fragile notes pooled and dispersed through the room, Sherlock stilled, exhaling slowly and moving his head to rest against mind on his shoulder. We rested there, locked in a moment of silent intimacy, a crystalline moment of fraternal closeness following a lifetime of friction and conflict.

I put the instrument down, resting it against a cushion; we both stood, unsure how to process this new element of intimacy into our relationship. I drew him into a brief embrace before moving towards the door.

“See you soon, little brother.”


End file.
